New criticism (character)

Abstract

A second group of New Critics applies to the characters of this novel the technique of close reading and of linking one aspect of a text to another in order to create a reading that is a unified and highly-charged whole; predictably, the results vary, which is to say that the critics’ views of Isabel Archer and her satellites vary. In one of the best guides to James’s development as a novelist, Philip M. Weinstein looks at six of the fictions, using The Portrait of a Lady as the fulcrum on which the writer’s career turned. Before, two separate modes of living were depicted, vision and action; after, the two modes are combined. In Roderick Hudson, for example, vision and action are embodied roughly in the characters of Rowland Mallet and Roderick Hudson respectively. In The Portrait of a Lady, the two modes are ‘uneasily blended’ in Isabel Archer, resulting in a character who is, if richly drawn, also somewhat confusing (p. 3).